2023-09-27 18:09:55
“When I look around, I see the ruins of the proud civilization
scattered like a vast heap of futility. And yet I will not commit
the grave sin of losing faith in man…”
Tagore [1]
A year cannot pass without us remembering Cintio, for everything he did for Martí and for Cuban culture, said Dr. Marlene Vázquez Pérez, director of the Center for Martí Studies (CEM), in an event that wanted to remember the birthday 102 by Cintio Vitier, celebrated on September 25. And immediately afterward she remembered part of his work: That Sun of the Moral World, Martí’s Themes, Resistance and Freedom…, all dedicated to studying and expanding the spiritual treasure of Cuba.
But Marlene emphasized two warnings that emanate from the life experience of this Cuban, who knew how to be an organic patriot. The first, that there is never enough reason to betray: when incomprehension incarnated in people who wanted to eclipse his light, he took dignified refuge in the Cuban essential and resisted stoically, and won. The second, that what is at stake in Cuba is not even the revolution – which has been, without a doubt, a cultural fact – but the nation that runs through our veins and appears in our voice: what is in game is being Cuban. And both things are related because the essential Cuban thing, what defines us, the sacred thing, is ourselves. Losing it is losing ourselves.
Then, CEM researcher Caridad Atencio spoke about a book she writes about the reception that Martí’s Campaign Diaries had among Origenists. Orígenes was a center that radiated Cubans of light, like the great Lezama and the magical Eliseo, like the worthy Cintio and the sagacious Fina… No wonder Martí was one of its reasons: luminous beings love light, like a son to his mother. Is it strange that, for Cintio, the diary that begins in Cap Haitien and ends in Two Rivers was sacred reading? Of course not because in him, what is Cuban appears full of meaning, it coagulates. Is it implausible that, for Lezama, Martí’s descriptions in the diary were a model of bewitched quantity? Of course not because the successive accumulations of images transport us and reveal to us, at once, the wonder of Cuban nature.
Expressly written for the occasion was the text that Dr. Pedro Pablo Rodríguez (PP) read: “Cintio Vitier and the Critical Edition.” There he told how he met Cintio and Fina, in the Cuban Room of the National Library; how both of them, being a young man, always respected and supported him; and how, through sacrifice, his magnum opus emerged: the Critical Edition of the Complete Works of José Martí. Happily, both Fina and Cintio saw the first two volumes finished and almost finished the third and fourth, made with more love than resources, without the Internet, but with confidence in the best of man, in virtue and in the future life. Already today, under the guidance of PP, who inherited the torch from them, 29 volumes have been printed! The Critical Edition is the work that dozens of people have been carrying out for decades, comparing each document with the originals, reviewing typos and clarifying meanings, including notes and adding indexes—names, subjects, geography—all to satisfy the curiosity of the reader. reader and help future researchers of Martí’s thought. The Critical Edition is a magnum opus, for its object, for its purposes, for its means. And since it all started with Fina and Cintio, each volume has their names inscribed from the beginning. “Cintio was not a man of hatred,” PP concluded. “He was a true Christian.” His deep faith and temptation-proof ethics, both encouraged by Fina’s support and wisdom, gave him the strength to stoically resist human incomprehension. That’s why one day PP says that he confessed to him: “None of that can make me change my convictions, my faith in man…”
And as honor, honor, the event ended with a tribute to Pedro Pablo himself. This time the entertainment came from the University of Matanzas, which, in the person of its vice-rector and other colleagues, awarded him the 50th Anniversary Seal of that institution, which has been awarded since May 9, 2022 to personalities and professionals of throughout the country who have made important contributions to higher education and, in the case of PP, particularly to the creation of the Martian Chairs. Among the gifts received by him were two multimedia, delivered by Professor Elvis Escribano, which collect, respectively, the Master’s teachings for the teachers and the trees mentioned by him in the Campaign Diary and that are part of the Martian Forests, created by that wonderful being from San Antonio de los Baños that everyone calls Felo.
Once again, Martí summons all the colors to the light. In his name you can only love, build and create. Whoever loves, builds and creates is, although he does not know it or recognize it, a Martian.
Let the work of Cintio Vitier come, then, to strengthen us in the spiritual fight! May his example come to purify our faith! Come teach us, in these times of twilight, that the moral Sun only knows auroras!
Use:
[1] Quoted by Gabriel Calaforra in the prologue to the Selected Works of Rabindranath Tagore, published by Art and Literature Publishing House (Havana, 1985), p. 16.
Taken from La Jiribilla
#Cintio #Vitier #reason #betray